19 August 2020
Hey! Akhil here.
Hope your week has been good.
Any creative act is a strange experience, and it gets particularly weird when the nebulous picture you see in your head starts to come together in real life. When you start out, there’s only tiny bits of sense and some sort of vague grand narrative for what you hope to achieve. You hope one day some lightning strikes this petri dish and triggers its contents to coalesce into a structure that is greater than the sum of its parts.
That’s what it’s felt like; creating Stranger Fiction with you, its first few hundreds of subscribers. I knew I was passionate about music, literature, and art / media / entertainment in general. Also, as a tech nerd, musician, and writer, I knew I wanted to create a platform where I could talk about, and some day help release, all of these things. A few months ago, when I started, all I was doing was talking about the music I loved and the music I was planning on releasing. But now, slowly, the big picture is starting to form in my mind. I can’t wait to show you what I’m seeing.
Here’s what’s been going on at Stranger Fiction the last week or so. I hope you enjoy it.
Music
The big ticket item here is the Bandcamp release of my latest album, my people are… It’s already been picked up by a couple of online reviewers: Step Into Desi and Artist Directory. On the 28th of August, it will be launched across all platforms, including Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and whatever specific streaming platform you’re on. Until then, please check it out, spread the word, and buy if you can.
Then there’s some wonderful music by other people.
Peter Gabriel — So: a classic of experimental pop.
Thiago Nassif — Mente: no wave infused with funk, pop infused with dissonant jazz. Melody + noise.
GoGo Penguin — GoGo Penguin: bright piano, technical proficiency, tight yet jammy, instrumental fusion between rock and jazz
Yaeji — What We Drew 우리가 그려왔: each short track of this mixtape is a hazy journey into the self
Murthovic — Antariksha Sanchar: Transmissions in Space, Vol. 1: a coherent opus of moody downtempo infused with Carnatic classical music.
Rival Consoles — Articulation: minimal electronic music for armchair, headbob, toetap, lemony beverage, one person daydreaming.
An essay about Doomsday by MF DOOM, and the art of the comeback. Doomsday is a pretty chill song given its emotional backstory. It's wickedly funny, and rife with puns and epic wordplay. And more-or-less devoid of cold cynicism. But at its key moments, for instance in its chorus, you can see how emotional Operation: Doomsday really is for DOOM.
The best music of 2020, updated. A Spotify mixtape.
Not Music
A couple of features on AI Dungeon, a fascinating text-based game text-based story game, where every bit of text you input, say ‘you walk towards the forest’, or ‘you search for food’ gets the game to move the plot along.
My thoughts on Basquiat — A Graphic Novel by Paolo Parisi: First work I've featured on Stranger Fiction that I do not recommend. Full marks for style, no marks for substance. Maybe it’s to do with the fact that I’m getting older and am losing my patience for misunderstood geniuses. It seems to me that the pursuit of goodness is a lot more meaningful than the pursuit of greatness. It’s just not as sexy a story to tell.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoy the stuff we’re putting out. Please feel free to reach out with feedback or praise or thoughts by just replying to this email. This isn’t a no-reply, it’s very much a yes-reply, so please feel free.
Until next time.
Love,
Akhil
